Creator Tip: Making cool spacesuits

First rule for making cool outfits for your space stage creature: don't be afraid to experiment. Get creative. Many parts can be used in non-conventional ways. On the creature above, for instance, I've used the Moon Gas Sensor for the arms and legs (it usually goes in the head). The boots were made with a hat and a chest plate.

Aqua View Masks make great neck braces. Try to make your creature with a thinner neck, and use the "Tab" key and arrow handlers to morph and position the part properly.

The Creepy & Cute Parts Pack has a bunch of very useful paint options and parts. If you're making a creature straight for the Space Stage, you can use the Mittenfist part as a gloved hand and the Footoon foot as a shoe.

More isn't always best. While you can use lots of parts for a detailed armor, you should check if the parts match each other aesthetically. There are several styles of outfit parts, and they don't always go well together. You can use instead a smart paint job for the illusion of a skin tight suit.

It doesn't have to be a humanoid creature to enjoy the comfort of a soft, warm suit. Though you may want to keep the base creature simple. If the creature has too many parts, it can be hard to tell if it's even wearing a suit.

All the creatures above can be found in my profile.

Theme Set: jarnomiedema's Spaceships

Here's a selection of jarnomiedema's spaceships. There's a noticeable Battlestar Galactica influence to most of them, and they all look awesome. Click the thumbnails for direct Sporepedia links.

Theme Set: Two building sets and a Creature

Today's theme set is a mix of two complete sets of amazing buildings - the Aves set by Tomanomanous and the Off-World set by LarvaLounge - and an incredible creature (in the center) by Sibuna. As always, click the thumbnails for direct Sporepedia Links.

Crator Tip: How to make asymmetrical creatures

This may be old news for the hardcore SPORE creators, but since many people keep asking me, I'll explain here. Asymmetry is possible in the creature, outfit, vehicle and ufo editors through a mod - a file that changes some values that the game loads at startup. The bad news is that you have to install or uninstall the mod to enable or disable the asymmetry - that means quitting the game and starting it again; there isn't a magic switch that you turn on and off.

Here is the download link for the Asymmetry Mod.

If that doesn't work, try here.

That little .package file has to be saved in the Spore Data folder. That's likely to be located on C:\program files\Eletronic Arts\Spore\data.

What does it do? Well, it makes the editors ignore symmetry, wich means that if you change a part or place a new one, it won't be mirrored on the other side of the creature or vehicle.

Some tips on using it:

First of all, don't go trying to make an asymmetric creature from scratch. The game is often unable to save your creature if you make asymmetric limbs. Uneven legs or arms on each side usually create issues with animation. So make a creature with the mod turned off, save it, enable the mod and edit the creature, makin minor tweaks.

To disable the mod without deleting the .package file from your data folder, just rename the extension to ".package.old".

Another cool way to use this mod is on the outfit editor. Outfits never give trouble, since they don't affect animation.

So be creative, an enjoy!

Creator Tip: making NPCs use matching buildings.

Do you love making themed matching sets of buildings? If so, you might want to know this tip.

In SPORE, when the game picks cities for NPC (Non Playing Character) civilizations, it picks a random City Hall and chooses buildings that match it aesthetically. By using a tag "set:" you can assure that it will allways pick the correct buildings to match the randomly chosen City Hall.

Example:

This City Hall has the tag "set:galazan". If the game picks this hall, it will search for a House, a Factory and an Entertainment building with that tag, and will find these:

Update: further testing has shown that this system is not 100% reliable. I guess we'll have to wait for better ways to control our content and create our SPORE Empires...

Creator Tip: How to play as or edit The Grox

In the site SporeBase.com you can find detailed instructions on how to hack the game so it allows you to edit or play as the Grox. Just click the link and follow the instructions.

Here's a creature I made by editing the Grox. Its a shame we can't upload them to the Sporepedia, though.

Creator Tip: How to get your content featured

User Uroboros made a little tutorial video that I feel I must share, for it shows a few simple steps that can can do wonders to improve the quality of the content being uploaded in the Sporepedia. Check it out:

Creator Tip: How to make inward-facing wheels turn in the right direction

spiritofcat prepared a neaty video tutorial on how to make inwards-facing wheels (needed to make motorcycles, for instance) without having them turning backwards, wich happens when we use the "Tab" key to turn the wheel 180º. Check it out!

Check out how it works in his Hybrid Rescue Tank.

Creator Tip: Player Tips

Players from the Gamingsteve SPORE community are posting their tips for the game on this thread. Check out some of them:

Editors:

- "There are some building textures that don't appear in the vehicle texture palette, but they can still get them on your vehicle by using the 'Paint Like' feature and then copy them around with the eyedrop."

Cell:

- "Putting a pair of spikes on the rear aft of the cell in a wide arc, shrinking its bottom segment to the smallest possible and enlarging the spikes to as big as possible will basically make you immune to rear facing attacks. Even huge creatures will just knock you forward with no damage when they bite."

Creature:

- "When you do the social game and try to dance/sing or impress another creature, they usually get "locked" if you fail to impress them. If you have done your 3 "impresses" and realise you are not going to make it, quickly press a move button and you stop your dance/singing and you can try impressing the same creature again."

Tribe:

- "Give gifts to any tribe with an orange or red face with you. You ONLY need to send the chief and the "gift" doesn't seem to use up any of your food. This will buy you time to either build up your music crew, or organize your war party."

Civ:

- "Before entering the Space stage from Civ, finish maxing out all your cities. These carry across, but your cash won't."

Space:

- "When colonising a planet, you just need to put ONE of each plant/creature to fill out that row in the foodweb. Once they have been beamed down, you can beam the plant/creature up again. Now you dont have to run out of them."

Theme Set: Zenarion Culture

Here's a special theme set: my first set of buildings and vehicles! Add them to your game by subscribing to my Zenar Sporecast, or click the thumbnails for direct Sporepedia Links.

P.S.: For some reason, the upload of the Zenarion with outfit didn't work. If I ever manage to upload it, I'll swich the image here.

Theme Set: manicmoose's Shell Mania

I've been meaning to do a feature on manicmoose's armored creatures for some time, and since one of his mollusc inspired critters was recently featured, I've figured I'm not going to get a better chance. This guy is a superb creator, but his masterpieces are the experiments with different types of shell. So click the thumbnails for direct sporepedia links.